Maegan Gindi

From the minute we’re born until the day we die, gender is everywhere. Birth certificates, baby clothes colors, first names, grade school playtime, bathrooms, relationships, credit cards, weekend hobbies, death certificates, and the ubiquitous pronoun all hinge on our gender. We don’t often ask the question “Is that a guy or a girl?” because the answer appears to coat our persons like graffiti in an abandoned urban sector. We carry our gender everywhere with us in our wallets. It’s stitched into our clothing and coded into our movements.

Most people don’t seem to notice the omnipresence of gender. When the bartender delivers that Cosmopolitan to a female patron and calls her ‘miss,’ no one looks up from his glass. Society takes for granted that people are strictly masculine or feminine, but what happens when gender ceases to be binary, when that ‘miss’ suddenly becomes a suit-wearing and aggressive-acting yet purse-touting businesswoman named Kyle? People look up.

We don’t often ask the question “Is that a guy or girl,” but sometimes, circumstances dictate that we do. On those occasions, the answers can be downright fascinating in their depth.

Gender is Different From Sex

Before we can talk about gender, we need to talk about sex, as they are two separate and distinct concepts. A person’s sex is defined solely by their anatomy. Men have Adam’s apples and women have ovaries (and Intersexed folks have a bit of each).

Gender is different from sex in that it is not at all associated with a person’s physical parts. Women can be masculine (e.g., Hillary Clinton) and men can be feminine (e.g., David Bowie). Behavior and psychology drive an individual’s gender. Gender is identity — it’s how you walk, talk, dress, feel, and think.

Culture defines what is deemed masculine and what is labeled feminine. In America, masculinity tends to be closely linked to the stereotypical alpha male. As a result, independence, power suits, and a slight obsession with football are masculine. On the flip side, emotional warmth, skirts, and a slight obsession with bubble gum are feminine.

Androgyny: Neither Black Nor White

Androgyny is a more or less ‘perfect’ mixture of masculine and feminine traits. Though commonly associated exclusively with the gay community, many people display androgynous tendencies regardless of their sexual preference. Some lipstick-wearing, Gucci-buying ladies love watching football. Some beer-drinking, deer-hunting men enjoy getting pedicures. Androgyny isn’t about being gay; it’s about displaying some (but not all) opposite sex-typed tendencies.

These days, the term crops up often in pop culture. David Bowie and Jodi Foster are famous examples of androgens, people who display characteristics of both genders. Dani Campbell from the first season of A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila is another example; in that show, she was often labeled as being “the best of both worlds” — a good balance of both male- and female-typed beauty.

Superhuman Strength...

Psychologists have been studying androgyny since the 1970s. Sandra Bem, a notable researcher in the field of gender, crafted a highly influential scale for measuring androgyny called the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). This scale was developed by categorizing 200 adjectives as being masculine, feminine, or neither. These categorizations were based on reactions from her testing base. So, if a word like ‘aggression’ was voted by a majority to be masculine, it was labeled masculine.

Bem posed her original model of gender as a straight line with masculinity at one end and femininity at the other end. The underlying assumption of such a model is that masculinity and femininity are two opposite and opposing forces; people who are masculine are automatically less feminine.

Janet Spence, another psychologist studying gender, posited a richer theory with a group of her associates. Spence’s model is often referred to as the additive model, as traits from both genders combine instead of compete to form a whole person. Her research argues that masculinity and femininity are orthogonal forces. Individuals can be high or low in feminine traits and either high or low in masculine traits, making four quadrants of characterization. Those possessing high quantities of both masculine and feminine traits were labeled as androgynous, and seemed to be on the whole happier, healthier, and more successful individuals.

In the additive model, as well as Bem’s original model, androgynous subjects are hypothesized to be superhuman in their abilities. Their combination of masculine and feminine traits makes them more adaptable to a wider range of situations, and thus better prepares them to face the world. Per this theory, the androgynous woman will be more aggressive then her strictly feminine counterparts and thus could stand a better chance at making CEO. The androgynous male will be more empathetic and thus stands a better chance at finding his soul mate.

While often praised as an asset, some research indicates that androgyny could have a harmful effect on some people. A study conducted by Warren Jones, et al. argues that happiness and success hinge not on a combination of traits but solely on the masculine axis, as those abilities are typically more valued in nature and in Western society. Androgynous women, according to this study, are the only ones with a provable edge.

...Or Itching Inferiority?

Much of the work surrounding androgyny tends to make gender-bending look strangely compelling and oddly attractive. Very little if any consideration is given to the negative social effects of being androgynous, of displaying some characteristics of the opposite sex. From the ivory towers of psychological research, androgyny looks by and large appealing. To the troops on the ground, the view is rather different.

Bathrooms contain the worst of it. My understanding is such that ordinary people seem to merely march on to the closest restroom as needed. For a lot of physically androgynous people, going to the bathroom is a process. Some people literally plan their day around when they’ll need to use a restroom, or else face the ugly prospect of being mistaken for the opposite gender and thrown out on their ears. They’ll watch traffic patterns, know which facilities are underused at what times, and which facilities are always occupied.

Being a butch lesbian, I have some experience in the trenches. When I purchase anything with my credit card, there’s about a 50% likelihood that the cashier will tell me that I’m not Jennifer Loomis, that the card I’ve handed them does not belong to me. Sometimes, they threaten to call security before I’ve had time to produce a photo ID. The simple act of buying a bag of groceries, then, makes me look criminal.

Perhaps androgyny is like anything else in life: A mixed bag. If androgynous people are truly better equipped to face the world, then perhaps the extra challenges associated with their gender-bending balance the equation. Some days, androgyny may feel like a suit of armor, protective and refreshingly cool to the touch. On others, perhaps it’s a poorly knit wool sweater, uncomfortable and unbearably itchy. But, most of all, androgyny, like all gender expressions, is identity — it’s how people walk, talk, dress, feel, and think.